Official Luthiers Forum!

I've been doing this a short while, but one thing I've never seen go on sale is banding machines... am I just missing it? Or does it just never happen ?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

You mean like a discounted price, or just where to get one? If you mean on sale at a discounted price, I've never seen that either.

http://www.bluescreekguitars.com/shop/i ... Path=10_49

http://www.lmii.com/products/tools-serv ... ng-machine

_________________
I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

Building your own isn't too difficult either. Grab one of the Keenovo silicon blankets from Ebay and a shop fox veneer press from Amazon. The rest of it is just a trip to home depot. There are some plans available online too. I used the one from GLS. It's digital delivery so you can get started while you're waiting for the silicon blanket to arrive on the slow boat from China. http://ultimate-guitar-online.ultimate- ... ducts_id=7

Brad

_________________
Insta - https://www.instagram.com/cbcguitars/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/cbcguitars

I have the same take on this as Kevin. Demand=supply, so there are no reasons to discount. If cost is a factor, I agree with Brad, they are not hard to make.

OTOH, I don't use a machine since I don't build lots of guitars every year. I just bend by hand over an iron. It's one of the most fun and satisfying parts of building in my opinion, to hear the sizzle of the water turning to steam, to feel the wood heat up and yield in your own hands, the lovely smell of the warm wood, the sides taking form. YMMV

_________________
"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

I have done both hand bending and bending with a Fox bender (via blanket, not light bulbs). Both are fine, but I am going to move back to hand bending for a while. Like Steve, I enjoy it, but equally important, I feel like it is more likely to give me the results I am looking for, and faster to boot. Using the Fox bender seems to take a lot of cool down time, and I get springback at the waist. I feel like I can get the bend the way I want it faster with the iron, and then move directly onto the second side. I guess I'll feel this way until I snap a side, right?

I have seen a couple go on sale here in the Classified section. Not for a while though. No need for a machine. Just make a form, cut off a few pieces of 2x4, round one off to fit the waist, grab some Quick Grip clamps, a blanket and slats and go to it. Oh yeah, Gloves!

_________________
Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I always use the bending iron. I suppose it's just because I've used it for almost 50 years and am stuck in my ways; but it works and is fast. Usually I bend to shape then clamp in the guitar form overnight so the wood dries while clamped to the form. The sides come out perfect the next day with little or no spring back. I suspect bending forms with electric blankets works better especially for bindings etc. but sometimes one just does what one has always done.

I made a fox bender from plans but had no luck with it alone. However my home made pipe bender works fine for rough shape. Then I can get it in the fox bender and after 30 min I have my shape.

I'm on #2 now.

There are all kinds of sources got the plans: http://www.cadguitarplans.com/product-c ... nder-plans

Build your own. I built mine when light bulbs were still in fashion as heat source. It easily adapted to heat blankets. Lol. I've rebuilt it once after I wore original out. Or, u could drop 5 big ones on s prebuilt version.

Good link to plans Mike!

_________________
Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

If you take the few minutes time to pre-bend the waist curve -- like the factory processes you'll have good success with any of the hobby designs that use a metal backing slat (ours are made of .020" aluminum).

_________________
Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

So true. I have found that using a small waist blanket in my bender, heating just the waist and bringing it in, then letting the waist cool (I spray a little water on it) then heating the main blanket and bend the rest, really helps getting the job done. (Is that really just one sentence???)

_________________
Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

I must have been a cheapskate - didn't even use plans. Just scaled dimensions from a net image of one with a form of known length, and used a length of studding for a waist screw.

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Ken, do you mean pre-bend the waist on a pipe, or just make that the first process in using the bending machine (i.e. slowly cranking the waist down, then completing the bending.)?

thanks, Mike

Leaves more for whisky!

Alex

_________________
"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

I hope not. Because I never did that. And would not want to start either. However, I always start at the waist. My wood is so softened with Super Soft II, I never seem to run into problems. Just bent some waterfall bubinga (whoa figure!!) into cutaway. Easy Peazy. The Fox Bender is a must have tool.

I love how those plans still have the holes for the incandescent light bulbs. Do they still sell lights like that?

"Ken, do you mean pre-bend the waist on a pipe, or just make that the first process in using the bending machine (i.e. slowly cranking the waist down, then completing the bending.)?"

On a pipe ---- sides are profiled and inner most waist curve apex marked -- Same as Taylor. I pre-bend cut-a-ways on a special plpe as well, life's good no cracks, no worries.

_________________
Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Or more tools and wood

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Yeah, your'e a cheapskate, I did the same thing...

_________________
I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

Me too (another cheapskate). There's nothing really critical in the dimensions. +/- 1/4" or maybe even 1/2" which is easy enough to eyeball if you have a guitar template handy for comparison. You just have to make sure your press screw fits, the bender is wide enough for your heating blanket, and your form hangs out the ends.

My recommendation is to bend by hand on a pipe. You can easily switch from pattern to pattern. ( I use more than a dozen shapes).
It takes me about an hour to bend both sides.
You can always make or buy a bender if and when you decide to make more than one shape a bunch of times.

I bent my first guitar on a hot pipe rig I put together using an electric charcoal starter. It was a good way to learn how wood bends. I've used a Fox bender since then, touching it up with the pipe. It seems a bit faster to get consistent bends. Also, I'm planning to use some figured wood, so I feels the bender is worth having for me.

Building a bending machine from plans, or from a blurry picture, is easy in the same sense that building a guitar is easy. All you need is a sufficient combination of innate ability, knowledge, and experience.

When I started building guitars I found it easy to build simple jigs that had no moving parts. I bought the detailed LMI plans, but looking at them I didn't think I was up to building a bending machine, at least in any reasonable amount of time--it was hard for me to visualize it in 3 dimensions. So I bought the Blues Creek bender, and it's worked well for me.

Since then, I built a Wells-Carol jig from the OLF tutorial. I learned a lot doing that, and I've built other jigs with a moderate degree of complexity. I can now say building a bending machine is easy. For me. Trivially easy for many. But not necessarily for everyone.

One thing I like about building my jigs is that the process of making them somehow helps me understand them in a more complete way. That translates into using them more effectively. It's hard to explain how this works. I guess it's like the deeper understanding of something you have when you learn it from personal experience instead of learning it in a class.

If you're relatively proficient in building jigs, I'd say make yourself a bending machine. If building jigs isn't easy for you, and you have the $, consider buying one. Or, go ahead and build one, with the understanding that what you save in money may not make up for the extra time, but what you learn will be valuable in the long term.

_________________
Tim Allen
"Never hurry, never rest."

I have a friend who would like to sell a gently used LMI deluxe bending machine. http://www.lmii.com/products/tools-services/bending/heating/lmi-bending-machine/lmi-bending-machine-deluxe It has a classical mold and shoe, but no heating blanket. If you are interested, please PM me and I will find out the asking price.

If you make one consider making the top removable. It is a lot easier to get the side out, especially a cutaway.

I built mine 13 years ago and made the tower too short so I had to make the top removable. Turned out to be a great idea.

If you secure the lower slat so it can't straighten when the cauls are removed and take the top off the side just pops out. It's also a lot easier to load the sandwich into the bender with the top off.

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.